Provisions Definition of public purpose Section 2(1) of the Act defines the following as public purpose for land acquisition within India: When government declares public purpose and shall control the land directly, consent of the land owner shall not be required. However, when the government acquires the land for private companies, the consent of at least 80% of the project affected families shall be obtained through a prior informed process before government uses its power under the Act to acquire the remaining land for public good, and in case of a public-private project at least 70% of the affected families should consent to the acquisition process. The Act includes an urgency clause for expedited land acquisition. The urgency clause may only be invoked for national defense, security and in the event of rehabilitation of affected people from natural disasters or emergencies.
Definition of 'land owner' The Act defines the following as land owner:
Compensation Compensation under this Act provides for resettlement and rehabilitation of people affected by displacement and acquisition of land under the act. • According to the
United States Department of Agriculture, as of January 2010, the average farmland value in the United States was $2,140 per acre (₹96,300 per acre). The farmland prices in the United States varied between different parts of the country, ranging from $480 per acre to $4,690 per acre. A 2010 report by the Government of India, on labour whose livelihood depends on agricultural land, claims that, per 2009 data collected across all states in India, the all-India annual average daily wage rates in agricultural occupations ranged between ₹53 and 117 per day for men working in farms (US$354 to 780 per year), and between ₹41 and 72 per day for women working in farms (US$274 to 480 per year). This wage rate in rural India study included the following agricultural operations common in India: ploughing, sowing, weeding, transplanting, harvesting, winnowing, threshing, picking, herdsmen, tractor driver, unskilled help, mason, etc.
Issues and expectations regarding compensation Issues • Compensation criteria are not understandable/clear • Compensation prices variation place to place • Compensation as per newly amended bill is not distributed (Under below mentioned circumstances)
Example • Land acquired in the period bill is under discussion in parliament. • Not many changes are done in bill after parliamentary discussions and LARR 2011 bill passed with marginal changes. • Large land acquisition are done by government/others during the period bill is under discussion in parliament. • During this period LARR 2011 bill under discussion, Compensation is as per previous Land acquisition bill (Poor farmers lost their lands in unfair/ unfavorable condition) • Multiplication factors in rural and urban area are added rather than increasing the base Land cost (Land is most essential component for any infrastructure geographically, socially, economically, as per terrain available with/without resources)
Expectations • Bill recommendation to be implemented as dated bill appeared in parliament.(2011) • Compensation should be time bound and to amount to be released with is a time frame / as per bill recommendations. • Fair compensation including life time productive income from land to Farmer/land owner (Till date he/she or family holding land) • Land Holding & maintenance cost to farmers/Land owners (as per current date land situation) till land acquired by government/others (As crop price are also not favorable to farmers in compression to other item in economy)
Benefits and effects The 2013 Act is expected to affect rural families in India whose primary livelihood is derived from farms. The Act will also affect urban households in India whose land or property is acquired. Per an April 2010 report, over 50% of Indian population (about 60
crore people) derived its livelihood from farm lands. With an average rural household size of 5.5, LARR Bill 2011 R&R entitlement benefits may apply to about 10.9 crore rural households in India. According to Government of India, the contribution of agriculture to Indian economy's gross domestic product has been steadily dropping with every decade since its independence. As of 2009, about 15.7% of India's GDP is derived from agriculture. Act will mandate higher payments for land as well as guaranteed entitlements from India's non-agriculture-derived GDP to the people supported by agriculture-derived GDP. It is expected that the Act will directly affect 13.2 crore hectares (32.6 crore acres) of rural land in India, over 10 crore land owners, with an average land holding of about 3 acres per land owner. For a typical rural household that owns the average of 3 acres of land, the Act will replace the loss of annual average
per capita income of ₹11,136 for the rural household, with: • Some economists suggest that it attaches an arbitrary mark-up to the historical market price to determine compensation amounts, along with its numerous entitlements to potentially unlimited number of claimants. This according to them shall guarantee neither social justice nor the efficient use of resources. • LARR 2011 as proposed mandates that compensation and rehabilitation payments to land owners and livelihood losers be upfront. This misaligns the interests of land acquirer and those affected. Once the payment is made, one or more of the affected families may seek to delay the progress of the project to extract additional compensation, thereby adversely affecting those who chose long term employment in the affected families. The Bill, these economists suggest, should link compensation and entitlements to the progress and success of the project, such as through partial compensation in form of
land bonds. These success-linked infrastructure bonds may also help poor states reduce the upfront cost of land acquisition for essential public projects such as hospitals, schools, universities, affordable housing, clean drinking water treatment plants, electricity power generation plants, sewage treatment plants, flood control reservoirs, and highways necessary to bring relief to affected public during fires, epidemics, earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters. The state of
Kerala has decided to pursue the use of infrastructure bonds as a form of payment to land owners. • LARR 2011 places no limit on total compensation or number of claimants; nor does it place any statute of limitations on claims or claimants. The beneficiaries of the Bill, with guaranteed jobs for 26 years, will have no incentive to be productive. The Bill should place a limit on total value of entitlement benefits that can be annually claimed per acre, this entitlement pool should then be divided between the affected families, and the government should run this program if it is considered to be fair. • LARR 2011 as proposed severely curtails free market transactions between willing sellers and willing buyers. For example,
DLF Limited – India's largest real estate developer – claims that the current bill may limit private companies such as DLF from developing affordable housing for millions of Indians. DLF suggests that direct land transactions with owners on a willing voluntary basis, at market-determined rate, should be kept out of the purview of the bill. There should be no conditions imposed on free market transactions between willing sellers and willing buyers. • An article in
The Wall Street Journal claims that the proposed LARR 2011 rules will apply even when any private company acquires 100 acres of land or more. For context,
POSCO India seeks about 4000 acres for its US$12 billion proposed steel manufacturing plant in the Indian state of Orissa. In most cases, even small companies planning US$10-US$300 million investment, seeking 100 or more acres will be affected by the compensation plus rehabilitation effort and expenses of LARR 2011. The WSJ article further claims that the proposed LARR 2011 bill doesn't actually define the word "acquisition," and leaves open a loophole that could allow government agencies to continue banking land indefinitely. • The
Observer Research Foundation's Sahoo argues that the bill fails to adequately define "public purpose". The current definition, he claims, can be interpreted vaguely. In leaving public purpose too vague and porous, it would ensure that land acquisition will remain hostage to politics and all kinds of disputes. More clarity is needed, perhaps with the option that each state have the right to hold a referendum, whereby the voters in the state can vote to approve or disapprove proposed public purpose land acquisitions through the referendum, as is done through local
elections in the United States for certain public acquisition of private or agricultural land. • The Confederation of Real Estate Developers' Association of India claims that the proposed LARR 2011 bill is kind of one-sided, its ill-thought-out entitlements may sound very altruistic and pro-poor, but these are unsustainable and will kill the goose that lays the golden egg. This group further claims that the bill, if passed, will increase the cost of acquisition of land to unrealistic level. It will be almost impossible to acquire 50-acre or 100-acre land at one place for planned development. They suggest that if India does not facilitate urbanization in an organized manner, all the incremental population will be housed in disorganized housing developments such as slums with dire consequences for Indian economy. In the long run, even farmers will suffer as fringe development of urban centres will largely be in the form of unauthorized developments and they will not realize the true economic potential of their lands. • The bill inflates the cost of land to help a small minority of Indians at the cost of the vast majority of Indian citizens, as less than 10% of Indian population owns rural or urban land., The LARR Bill 2011 favours a privileged minority of land owners as the Bill mandates above market prices for their land plus an expensive rehabilitation package. The Bill does not mandate a process by which the time involved in land acquisition is reduced from current levels of years. Nor does the Bill consider the effect of excessive costs upfront, and expensive rehabilitation mandate over time, on the financial feasibility of large-scale, socially necessary infrastructure projects needed by 90%+ of Indians who are not landowners. In an editorial, Vidya Bala writes that the most important weakness in the Bill is bringing non-government transactions too under its purview. Private players buying 50+ acres of urban land tracts or 100+ acres of rural areas would be required to comply with the R&R package stated in the Bill. • LARR 2011 Bill's sections 97, 98 and 99 are incongruous with other laws of India in details and intent. Section 98, for example, says that the provisions of the Bill shall not apply to the enactments relating to land acquisition specified in the Fourth Schedule of the Bill. According to Indian Legal Code, the Fourth Schedule referred to by LARR 2011 Bill, consists of 16 bills, including the
ancient monuments and archaeological sites and remains Act, 1958, the atomic energy Act, 1962, the special economic zones Act, 2005, the cantonments Act, 2006, the railways Act, 1989 amongst others. Laws can not be in conflict with each other. LARR Bill carve outs through Sections 97, 98 and 99 add confusion, offering a means for numerous citizen petitions, lawsuits and judicial activism. The LARR 2011 Bill thus fails to deliver on the goals motivating it. == See also ==